I still get nightmares sometimes.

"Everyone gets nightmares," you might say. Not like mine. Your nightmares don't push you to your past or pull you away from your future. You don't have to think about how one day, you're going to make your past self have terrifying recurring nightmares. Because even if it makes no sense, that's what you've already lived through, and who are you to question what you already will do?

I used to lie awake at night thinking about that kind of thing. I thought a lot about free will, about whether who I was, or who I will be, actually define who I am now. I used to be afraid to go back to sleep, so I'd often force myself to get up and work on something, even if I was exhausted.

I hated myself for being afraid of my nightmares. Of fearing fear.

But that isn't a problem anymore.

I'll wake up from a nightmare sometimes. Usually the nightmare is that I'm all alone again, like I was when I was younger. Sometimes the nightmares will show me my immediate future, which is useful in a "blessed curse" kind of way. Sometimes I'm even glad when I wake up in the night, because it's instinct telling me that I have to get to her in a hurry.

She often tells me that she needs me.

I wish I could convey just how much more I need her.

How much I need to hear her murmuring my name while she dreams. How much I need her to accidentally kick me during the night. How much I need her to hog the covers. How much I need her endlessly long golden ringlets to tumble off the side of the bed. How much I need to hear her sleepily wish me good morning in that soft, loving voice of hers.

Because when I wake up from a nightmare of loneliness, there she is, the most radiant person I will ever meet, lightly snoring next to me. She usually won't even stir when I lightly kiss her forehead and whisper how glad I am that she's there. I don't mind it, any of it.

All she has to do is sleep next to me, which she wants to do anyway, and I get an instant reminder that I'm not alone, and never will be alone again. It is perhaps her greatest gift…the love she brings to others. The love that I sometimes still can't believe is mine.

That morning, the dawn light was streaming in behind us, though I still had the blinds closed. She saw a picture of me and my parents on the side table. I keep it nearby so that I can remind myself what my parents looked like. Even though they're just faces to me …that I couldn't remember the people who loved and raised me… used to make me feel even more lonely.

"Are these your parents, Mamo-chan?" she asked, as she sat back down on the bed with me.

"Yeah…"

"You've lived alone… without your family… all this time?"

"That's right," I replied.

"Were you lonely?" she asked gently.

I needed to tell her just what this night had meant to me.

"I'm not lonely anymore… You're my family now, Usako. I feel like I was waiting all by myself to meet you."

She flushed with happiness, and whispered my name again. She leaned against my knee and nuzzled close to me. In that moment, my Usako, who had already given me so much, made me feel like I would never be lonely again.

My Usako.

How wonderful it is to say those words.

My Usako.